Whats the best clonezilla setup?

corychurch6669 · 2011-09-09T09:51:34.000Z

I’ve been heavily immersed in linux and clonezilla lately but with my limited knowledge, still, on it, I have yet to find the BEST setup that works with any and all clients.

I was running an OpenSUSE install, with DRBL 1.9 something and it worked well for Dell gx620s, optiplex 755s, 760s, and 780s. But then it broke for whatever reason, so I built another clonezilla server using Ubuntu 11.4 and drbl 1.10 (latest). I finally got that to work with our brand new Dell Opliplex 390s with i3 processors (using option 2 in drbl for “use same cpu architecture as this server”) but it gives me a kernel error when I try to deploy images to those older dell gx620s.

My server is setup on a dell gx620, pent 4, 1G ram.

So has anyone found a setup that works well with different models of PCs? Does anyone use Fog instead? Pros and Cons?

Thank you.

george1421 · 2011-09-09T09:54:00.000Z

We do bare metal restores by PXE booting clonezilla from a live image. We just backup to a network share, usually a SMB share.

We use FOG for system deployments. We have a FOG image for each hardware platform.

-Geo

corychurch6669 · 2011-09-09T10:07:18.000Z

I’ve been considering FOG, as I’ve heard it pretty reliable. The greatest thing I like about clonezilla SE and also being able to use clonezilla live. Then I can take my cd and image (on hdd) to any location and reimage a PC in like 15 minutes. from what i understand, fog cant do that, and there’s no way I can deploy or clone and image over our live network.

itninja5778 · 2011-09-09T10:08:21.000Z

I only ever had a few images to backup/restore so I always just used a 32GB USB stick. I did notice however that depending on which USB stick I was using there was about a 4x speed difference when creating an image and about 5+x when deploying an image.

itninja5778 · 2011-09-09T10:10:04.000Z

I think my OS drive was about 12GB installed on the system and I could back it up in about 10 minutes (these are really rough numbers since I no longer do this type of work) and I could deploy that same image in about 3 minutes from bootup to shutdown.

corychurch6669 · 2011-09-09T10:12:56.000Z

But whatever using Clonezilla SE and doing a multicast deployment to 8-12 PCs at the same time.

I’m wondering whats the best flavor and version of linux to use as well as what version of drbl to use.

george1421 · 2011-09-09T10:16:47.000Z

I guess I should have been clearer. If you are doing a DR backup and restore clonezilla has it. We boot from a PXE boot server. There is no need for CDs and such. Just pick F12 during booting and select the PXE boot option.

If you are installing new windows images to clients then FOG is the best choice. With FOG you can install 1 computer or cast to 10 computers all at once. FOG also has the management engine to mange all of your base images.

The USB stick works well too, and just as IT Ninja mentioned the USB port has an impact on the transfer speed.

-Geo

corychurch6669 · 2011-09-09T10:34:08.000Z

But FOG is all done over the network right? I can’t take Fog to a branch a couple hours away and deploy a single image can i?

itninja5778 · 2011-09-09T11:34:35.000Z

Nope… probably not. You would be limited by whatever your network connection between siteA and siteB (so probably not much relative to modern day LAN speeds).

This was another reason I frequently used USB keys instead of a network setup. The other issues you might consider is how many machines you might flash at once. According to this: how fast is USB 2.0 vs Firewire or 100Base-T Ethernet?

usb 2.0 is about 2/3 the speed of gigabit ethernet however if your deploying to 2 or more machines at once it would be faster to use 2 USB sticks physically plugged into each machine.

johnfhumphrey9010 · 2011-09-12T14:05:02.000Z

Good question, as I have wondered same with FOG and am currently just using CloneZilla Live. My other question is the CloneZilla images I have now, can I use them with FOG or do I completely need to recreate my ‘library’

…Chuch wrote:

But FOG is all done over the network right? I can’t take Fog to a branch a couple hours away and deploy a single image can i?

corychurch6669 · 2011-09-22T08:16:14.000Z

It seems I have done enough experimentation to solve this one myself. So let it go on record that this setup appears to be the best configuration for Clonezilla on Ubuntu:

Ubuntu 10.4
The latest stable DRBL

Ok, basically that’s it. My server is setup on a Dell Optiplex GX620, 80G HDD, 2G ram, Pentium 4. And I used this guide for setting it all up: Setup a Clonezilla Server on Ubuntu | geekyprojects.com

I chose to use option “1 → i586 CPU architecture” when it asked. That was the kicker before with my issues.

I have successfully deployed images to (all dells) gx620s with pentium 4s, optiplex 755s with core 2 duos and optiplex 390s with intel i3 processors. So I have pretty much spanned the line of current intel processors.